Wingnuts would have us believe that only incompetent wimps like President Obama use teleprompters, never mind that Republicans use them all the f-ing time. (Google it.)

That said, watch this Reuters photo blanket the wingnutosphere starting ah, right about now, to “prove” that.

A teleprompter obscures U.S. President Barack Obama as he speaks during a campaign event at Capital University in Cleveland, Ohio August 21, 2012. Obama is on a two-day campaign trip to Ohio, Nevada and New York. (Image via REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

While establishment Republicans are sweating bullets trying to get Missouri Representative Todd Akin to withdraw from his senatorial campaign for speaking the truth as to what Republicans believe about abortion, the party has incorporated Akin’s stance into its official platform:

In what will probably strike many people as a monumentally tone-deaf move, the GOP plans to include a plank in its 2012 platform calling for an amendment that would outlaw abortions under any circumstance. CNN reported on the draft language it obtained on Monday night, and the platform committee approved it on Tuesday:

[.]

This plank isn’t new for the GOP; it was also part of the party’s platform in 2008. But given the major flap this week over Missouri Republican Todd Akin’s remark that women who are the victims of “legitimate rape” can’t get pregnant and therefore a rape exception isn’t necessary, the release of the draft language arrives at a pretty bad time for the GOP. Scores of Republicans have condemned Akin’s remarks. But by including it in the platform, the party is formally aligning behind a position that shows the same disregard for women who are the victims of rape that Akin got pilloried for vocalizing.

The last few words there are key: “got pilloried for vocalizing.” Republicans would rather not talk about their no-abortion-ever stand. If they did, they might lose the all-important independent vote. Akin isn’t being pilloried for his beliefs, he’s being pilloried for talking about them in such a public forum. Republicans agree with him ideologically; it’s just that they hope to win elections by keeping quiet about that, and then to stealthily slip laws under the door, in the middle of the night, to codify those beliefs.

A company in India plans to buy $7 billion worth of coal from Kentucky and West Virginia producers, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Wednesday.

Beshear, at a Capitol news conference, called the private partnership “a great example of a new market for Kentucky resources.” He noted that he made an economic development trip to India two years ago and will be making another trip soon.

The deal is for 25 years and involves India’s Abhijeet Group and New Jersey-based FJS Energy LLC buying coal from Kentucky and West Virginia through Kentucky-based affiliates FJSE Marshall Inc. and FJSE River Coal.

Under the agreement, Kentucky coal companies will export about 9 million tons of coal each year to the Abhijeet Group, which has been buying coal from Indonesia and Australia.

Jim Booth of the Inez-based Booth Energy said his energy team is looking forward to working with India.

“We are very pleased that we have forged a partnership that meets their demand abroad and creates and sustains Kentucky jobs,” he said.

How intrusive into our private lives is the Paul Ryan / Todd Akin “Sanctity of Life Act?” Very:

Paul Ryan and Todd Akin: This is a person.

The national battle over Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape” has shed light on a “personhood” bill, co-sponsored by Akin and Paul Ryan, called the Sanctity of Life Act. Much of the chatter today has focused on whether Ryan opposes abortion in cases of rape. The Romney campaign confirmed today that Ryan does personally oppose it, while clarifying that a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose it.

But what about the other legal implications of the bill Ryan and Akin co-sponsored? In an interview just now, Dem Rep. Louise Slaughter, one of the leading pro-choice voices in Congress, raised two startling possibilities.

“One of the questions around this legislation is, Could a rapist who impregnated a victim sue that victim if she decided not to carry that baby and to have an abortion?” Slaughter said. “Another question: Could in vitro fertilization be outlawed?”

It’s unclear how this legislation would work. The bill affirms that from the moment of fertilization onward, “every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” It then says that Congress and the states have the “authority” to protect all human beings — again, defined as human life from fertilization onward — residing in their juristictions.

Slaughter’s suggestion is that this affirms the authority of Congress or the states to pass laws outlawing IVF, since that procedure requires the destruction of embryos, or that it could give legal weight to a rapist’s insistence that his victim not abort her baby — though again, it’s unclear how this would work.

“What it says is that a single cell can achieve all the protections the Constitution of the United States bestows on persons,” Slaughter said of the bill. “Scientifically the law is crazy.”